It is not grief, exactly, and it is not guilt, though both of those come later and stay.

It is the feeling of the world turning over while you stand still — every fixed point you steered by suddenly revealed to be painted on a wall that is now rotating away from you.

For three years I had known certain things the way I knew the ground was down.

Lucy was the thief.

Maya was the loyal one.

My money was the thing under threat and my family was the wall around it.

Standing in that administrator’s office, I felt all of it invert at once, silently, like a photograph developing into its own negative, and I had to put a hand on the back of a chair to stay upright.